UT to introduce female mascot

The University of Toledo will add a female mascot to join “Rocky” next year.

“Rocksy” will debut on Aug. 31 at Music Fest 2011, a free music festival for students, alumni and community members before the home opening football game the following day against New Hampshire at the Glass Bowl.

“Most people think of mascots as related to sports teams and games, they really are a brand identity for the institution,” UT Vice President for External Affairs Larry Burns said. “Following different professional teams and now some universities more and more of them are having more than one mascot with one of them being a male version and one being a female version.”

UT asked the community to help name the new mascot with a poll on its website, tallying ‘Love,’ ‘Like’ and ‘Lame’ votes. With the most ‘Love’ votes, Rocksy received 863 of the total 1,779 votes. Among the other options were Rachel, Ricki, Rochel, Rochelle and Rockelle, as well as an option to write in a suggestion.

Burns heard the idea from the student currently performing as Rocky and took it to Athletic Director Mike O’Brien and President Lloyd Jacobs, who both signed off on the idea.

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To elaborate on my previous remark: UT is facing a host of problems in the form of layoffs, disgruntled faculty, diminishing state funding, and a poor academic reputation. Yet UT administrators lounge around in their offices dreaming up girl mascots. This is not good.